Editor's Note

“The Lourdes Pilgrimage” has been part of the spiritual life program of the extended monastic community at Portsmouth for over forty years now. I did not have the opportunity to join this group as a student, but was invited to join as a faculty chaperone for the first time in 2008, just shy of my 49^th birthday. While I certainly had long identified as a practicing Roman Catholic, and had been teaching theology throughout my career, that 2008 experience remains a kind of seminal moment for my faith, a deep and authentic renewal, an opening of my eyes. Memories of just how this happened, reflections of the meaning of such a moment, began to come back to me as this year’s virtual pilgrimage began. This 2008 group, joined by Fr. Chris Davis, school nurse Nancy Weida, and four Form V students, occurred in the 150^th anniversary year of the apparitions to Bernadette. A plenary indulgence was on offer for all who completed the prescribed program, and I fully participated. By the end of the week – to my surprise, as several days into the program I was only exhausted and soured on the experience – a powerful sense of grace began to seep into me. This may have been rendered through the cold, cold bath that had been quite jarring, but seemed to result in the disappearance of lingering hip pain I had been experiencing, despite an epidural injection. It may have been triggered by the small earthquake that occurred on the afternoon of the 150^th anniversary of our Lady’s final apparition to Bernadette. I do not know exactly what it was in the potent recipe of Lourdes: the processions, the liturgies, the confessional, the community of care. It is a potent mixture that seems correlated to miracles great and small: small ones, like the healing of a hip; great ones, like the return of hope to those in despair. I still try to piece together just what happened to me, in that dawning of a sense of grace and the birth of a dedication to Our Lady that has generated, among other acts of devotion, a steady practice of the rosary. Is this even me, I sometimes ask, doing these things, believing these things, praying so much, holding such a faith? If I can try to put some sort of words to just what happened, I might say that I began to realize, at that time, that I had somehow quietly passed, almost unconsciously, from a profound sense of loneliness, a subconscious and seemingly cosmic aloneness, to a basic awareness of a divine accompaniment. I arrived at an inexplicable sense that, as Julian of Norwich framed it: all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well. I rediscovered His promise and pledge: “I am with you.” I am reminded of an icon of Saint Menas with Christ, who is a placing a supportive hand on Menas’ shoulder. It felt something like that, though whether I was sensing the hand of our Lord or of Our Lady, I am not sure – nor, most likely, would I have known the difference.

Pax,

Blake Billings